I never go to the public sector for data if I can help it. Their crash tests are done to favor politically correct small cars, they are more subject to taking payoffs to make data come out the way they want, etc. You could do away with 75% of the public sector and not even make a bump in the road regarding quality of life.
Yawn...you guys must really be desperate for something, anything to trash Bush over. Ok, let's take it by the numbers. 1. Andrew Card suspended pending regulations. The FACTS are that liberal activists in the Clinton administration went on a wild orgy of reg writing when they found out Gore would not be president. If these reg's were so crucial, why did they wait until the 11th hour to issue them? Obviously , it was a well-orchestrated attempt to create an immediate issue to bash the new administration. "Bush cancels health and environment reg's." How juicy is that for the liberal media? 2. Natural gas pipeline. No idea what the facts of this are. Typically the route of something like this would be confidential for obvious reasons, eg to prevent land speculation. It is an isolated incident that proves nothing. 3. Aderbeen Proving Ground litigation. First I've heard of this, although there is another similar dispute involving poison gas that was buried in the middle of Washington's most exclusive residential area, which was an Army post in WW II. The government's conduct is inexcusable, but it started long before this administration and is being handled by the Army, not the White House. 4. Cheney task force. There are two disputes here. One was created by Dem's in congress who got the GAO to try to subpoena records from the White House. The White House said no. A court ruled in favor of the administration. The GAO has no jurisdiction over the White House and can't demand records from it. The other dispute involves a lawsuit by a couple of activists, one on the right and one on the left, to get the same documents, under FOIA I suppose. It is in the courts. The issue here is the ability of the administration to get candid advice from people who might not want their opinions reported on the evening news. The competing issue is openess in government. While it seems naive to me to expect every action of the Executive Branch to be open to the public, the courts will draw the line. 5. Iran contra analogies. Iran contra, like the endless Clinton scandals, involved efforts of Congress and special prosecutors to get documents. There the issue was somewhat different, as it involved claims of executive privilege. I'm not aware of any of these current disputes over documents involving executive privilege claims. I'm sure if congress for example, demanded minutes of Bush's meeting with Paul Bremer that would be the response, and it would be legitimate. In sum, the U.S. News article was a thinly disguised editorial that sought to bootstrap a couple of isolated incidents into some big controversy. All administrations keep things secret, some more than others and some with more justification than others. At the end of the day you have to ask what difference it makes, and the answer is not much.
AAA, thx for the **SOLID** reply. What is the "GAO," btw? In response to your fine reply, I think it is a legitimate concern when you have individuals such as 'ol stowaway cheney who won't release the details of their energy committee meetings. What I am seeing here is the same group of people from the Iran contra era pulling the same old bullshit as before. Yes, every administration sucks, and when dumya finally gets the boot, I will bitch endlessly about who's there next. Back to the point, I still fail to see why items such as cheney's energy task force meetings need to be kept a secret. It seems that they have no problem whatsoever leaking "confidential" documents when they want something (such as Powell's bundle of lies to the U.N.) but as soon as someone wants something that the administration hasn't decided its in their best interests to provide, then well sorry, it's confidential and no one can see it. I can understand about keeping military shit secret, but the energy stuff? c'mon. And let me get back to the whole iraq thing here. Nobody gives a shit about saddam or his inbred children and we're all happy they're gone. What I give a shit about is an administration who failed to justify one war and instead provided a bunch of lies, and the possible future consequences of making pre-emptive strikes (based on faulty, illogical evidence) an OK thing to do, not just with regard to the US as the aggressor, but with other nations who feel that they are in imminent danger of being attacked. This list of other paranoid countries besides the US includes such superstars as: India Pakistan Turkey Cyprus North Korea South Korea China Taiwan (I can go on, but I think my point is made).
The CIA was totally "prostituted" by the Bush Administration in an effort to build a case for war against Iraq. And yes, as a REPUBLICAN I really have a serious problem with this!
All partisanship aside. What is happening has direct effect to all of us. We move to a new house, or built a new one in average once every 6-7 years. With the new laws in place, we will not be able to find out if the property is near or on top of a chemical spill or dump. If the your children come down with some new disease or cancer or whatever, due to chemical spill, or hazardous materials leaking into the waterbeds... the information is hidden, maybe even not reported, and cannot be found anymore? You or your physician will not even know what hazardous agents are there and how to counter act them? couple of excerpts "The push toward secrecy has extended far beyond law enforcement. Under a new policy restricting access to "sensitive but unclassified" information, agencies have made it harder for the public to see records that are often used by health and safety advocates and that industry has long sought to keep secret. The EPA, for instance, now limits access to the "risk management plans" that companies must file to inform communities what is being done to prevent toxic chemical accidents, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has withdrawn information on hazardous materials stored at power plants." "Attorney General John Ashcroft has singled out "sensitive business information" as one of the categories federal officials should shield from Freedom of Information Act requests. And under legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security, most information provided by business -- on anything from software security problems to toxic spills -- will be exempted from public-access laws. For example, notes Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Jon Devine, if an improperly stored load of hazardous material were to explode at a chemical plant, information on the substances involved -- and even evidence of negligent storage -- could be off-limits to firefighters, local investigators, and the victims themselves. "The only thing the government can use the information for," Devine says, "is to determine whether they need more security. But they can't force the company to do anything about it." "Across the country, state officials are following the federal government's lead in closing off public records. Pennsylvania has dismantled a database with environmental information about mines and soil conditions. Iowa has classified architectural information on school buildings. And several states, including Louisiana, have passed anti-terrorism laws that allow local police to keep secret any information gathered in connection with terrorism investigations." http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2003/01/ma_219_01.html
We've got a SERIOUS PROBLEM when one renegade branch of government invalidates laws passed by Congress. All you people who think you have any freedom in this country are CRAZY. What is happening here is the same shit that often preludes transitions from democratic to fascist governments. YOUR FUCKING GOVERNMENT just smacked you in the face and if you are too goddamn stupid to see this, then you do not deserve to vote. But the other 25% of us in this country do. Your government, under Fashcroft, just took away your fundamental freedoms and you better be pretty goddamn careful about what you do next, because this could be it for another 20 years until all of this shit gets overturned. Thanks to most Americans being OK with the Cuba "detainees" any citizen in this country can be held secretly without right to a lawyer of their own funding, PLUS ANY trial can be dismissed on the grounds of secrecy, and because of this pressing need for security there can be no independent civilian audit of such censure. It's a perfect Catch-22 for the average schmuck on the street who will go along with it. Welcome to the United Saudi Arabia, where our slogan is "we're not as bad as Iraq, but we are in the oil business and we all drive big cars and that makes it all OK."